Both research and practice have shown that while some comments on L2 writing lead to substantive revision, others go unattended, failing to achieve their anticipated instructional effect. It is therefore crucial to determine how learners perceive different commentary types, so that teachers can enhance the efficacy of their feedback. The present…

Describes an exercise to help advanced English-as-a-Second-Language students learn to edit their writing and stick to word limits. The paper explains how to set the word-limit parameters (limiting writing to 100 words), encourage self-editing, define the criteria of the assignment at the outset, and build a layering process. (SM)